Alcohol-related deaths of women in their 30s and 40s are steadily rising, according to a new study, which calls for urgent action to tackle what it calls a worrying trend. Generally, deaths from alcohol have been falling in both England and Scotland, but it is a different story for the generation born in the 1970s, say researchers from the Glasgow Centre for Population Research. What they have found is a warning signal that needs immediate attention if drink is not to cause more tragedy for decades to come, they say.

The revelation of the rising death rate comes in the week the government shelved proposals for a minimum unit price for alcohol in favour of other measures that experts say will be ineffective. As a result, the Faculty of Public Health, Cancer Research UK and the UK Health Forum have all pulled out of the government's responsibility deal on alcohol,which was designed to encourage voluntary action by the industry.

The study's authors, Deborah Shipton and colleagues, were looking at the trends in Glasgow, which has the highest death rate of people of working age in Europe. To figure out the role of alcohol in these early deaths, they compared the effects of drink on the populations of two similarly deprived cities in England: Liverpool and Manchester.

They found similar trends in all three cities, but of greatest concern was the death rates in the youngest cohort of women they looked at – those born in the 1970s. Their death rates in all three cities were not falling, but rising.

"The similarity of trends in alcohol-related deaths in young women in Glasgow, Manchester, and Liverpool raises real concerns for the long term health of this cohort in both England and Scotland," they say.

As this occurred in all three cities, it "is hard to dismiss this as a city-specific phenomenon," they continue, adding: "It is imperative that this early-warning sign is acted upon. Failure to have a policy response to this new trend may result in the effects of this increase being played out for decades to come."

The late night drinking culture, following the easing of the licensing laws, together with cheap drink – especially wine – play a big part, they say, as does industry marketing and promotion.

"The UK-wide increase in alcohol consumption (driven by increases in wine consumption) is linked to increases in alcohol availability and affordability, together with the promotion of alcoholic drinks by the alcohol industry and promotion of the night time economy by successive governments," they say in their paper in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health.

Across all the cohorts, including both men and women, deaths are mostly due to liver disease (71%), with 26% attributed to mental health or behavioural causes, 2% involving other organs and under 1% caused by alcohol poisoning.

Deaths in women were more likely to be liver-related than mental health-related. According to the Office for National Statistics, there were just under 3,000 alcohol-related deaths among women in 2011.

Shipton cited the death rates at the age of 34 as an indication of the falling trend in men and rising trend for women. In Glasgow, alcohol deaths at the age of 34 among men born in the 1950s were 22 per 100,000. Among those at the same age born in the 1960s, they had soared to 38 per 100,000. But among those born in the 1970s, deaths of 34-year-olds from drink had fallen to 30 per 100,000.

Deaths are lower among women, but the pattern is worryingly different. Among those born in the 1950s, eight per 100,000 died by the age of 34 of alcohol-related causes. That rose to 14 per 100,000 among the 1960s cohort and climbed again to 20 per 100,000 in those born in the 1970s.